


I’m a walking democracy, baby

by Prim_the_Amazing



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Body Sharing, Gen, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Season/Series 13, Staff of Charon Aftermath, fragmentation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 09:03:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11310150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prim_the_Amazing/pseuds/Prim_the_Amazing
Summary: “We’re fine,” Tucker says. Carolina and Wash look distinctly not pleased at that answer, probably because it took him several minutes to come up with that stunningly inspirational response.“We’re?” Carolina asks with a raised eyebrow.Or it may have been the we pronoun, right. Oops.





	I’m a walking democracy, baby

**Author's Note:**

> How I remembered which of the twins were fear and which one was happiness: Eta D:>, Iota :D.

_I’m the people person,_ Sigma ‘says’. _I should handle this._

 _But Wash and Carolina will be able to tell it’s you,_ Eta protests worriedly. _They know you and they_ hate _you._

 _I can pretend to be one of the others,_ he assures. _I can even pretend to be Tucker._

 _Dude no,_ Tucker chimes in, snapping out of just standing on the sidelines of the conversation (a habit that he’s trying very hard not to let become a too ingrained habit). _That’s a terrible idea. If they notice they’ll be all paranoid forever that any of the voices that come out of our mouth is actually yours. Plus, it’s kinda shitty._

 _You said ‘our’ mouth,_ Theta points out quietly, and Tucker chooses to act like he hadn’t heard that. 

“Tucker,” Wash says in that disquieted tone of voice he’s been using on and off with him ever since the Staff of Charon. He switches it out with his concerned voice sometimes, and his seriously-pissed-off or massively-awkward (the one he used the first few weeks after they reunited with Donut and Wash still hadn’t worked up the guts to apologize for that whole shooting-you-near-lethally thing) voice whenever he’s sure he’s talking to one of the fragments. As if he isn’t talking to all of them at once. “You’re doing that thing again.”

That ‘thing’ being taking too long to answer a question, getting distracted by the unending counsel of How Should We Respond going on constantly in his head now. Hopefully the fragments will get a little better at that soon. Some day.

 _Or Agents Washington and Carolina can adjust to us,_ Delta points out oh so reasonably, as straightforward as he ever gets about the fact that he’s genuinely upset. They were all upset though, of course.

_Except for me!_

Except for Iota, right.

 _Agent Washington,_ Gamma prods them. Right, he’s still waiting for a response (and getting more and more upset the longer it takes to come).

“We’re fine,” Tucker says. Carolina and Wash look distinctly not pleased at that answer, probably because it took him several minutes to come up with that stunningly inspirational response.

“We’re?” Carolina asks with a raised eyebrow.

Or it may have been the we pronoun, right. Oops.

“... Yuuuup,” he draws out awkwardly. “We’re all fine in here! No headaches! Omega’s been really good about not shouting so fucking much.”

Omega growls in a way a human throat could never manage. Tucker feels that odd attention-arresting feeling of the fragments _moving_ somehow in his mind, and the burning-warm (that somehow doesn’t hurt) of Sigma nestles close into the simmering-warm (like a pot just on the edge of boiling) of Omega. _You’re doing fantastic, Omega. Thank you. From all of us._

 _Thank you!_ Iota happily adds.

Omega grumbles without actually vocalizing (mentally vocalizing?) any words. You don’t really have to follow the rules as closely when you exist in a mindscape, apparently.

“It started as headaches for Maine,” Carolina comments, in the way that makes Tucker think of the irresistible urge to press down on a bruise or pick at a scab.

“Yeah, I gathered as much from the panic you two raised when I mentioned my last headache,” Tucker says dryly. “And I’m telling you, that was just because Omega was being his usual shouty bitch self.”

 _You’re doing_ so _well,_ Sigma says, and presses himself harder into Omega’s side (his simmering feeling growing hotter, more frantic, as if the boiling point is approaching).

Tucker briefly considers pausing to try and help calm Omega down, but right now he’s a little busy doing that with the two Freelancers in front of him. One thing at a time. Anyways, Omega _is_ a shouty bitch.

 _Stop dwelling on Omega,_ Eta directs at him fearfully, shuffling through his mind to get as far away from Omega as possible, as if that will do anything, as if the place they’re all sharing isn’t so small and close and unavoidably intimate.

“I’m not going to turn into the Meta,” he plows on, carefully avoiding the we pronoun this time, even though it feels more right. “No one in here’s trying to become a hive mind, we don’t all try to control the body at the same time. We take turns. We talk shit out. We make sure we agree on stuff before we do it. We vote. I’m a walking democracy, baby.” He throws in a wink and his most charming smile. _See, I’m alright,_ he tries to say with his face, with his casual and relaxed body language _(Your shoulders have tensed up again,_ Gamma helpfully points out to him, and he consciously relaxes them again). They don’t seem to be following his cue. 

 _Damn paranoid Freelancers,_ Tucker thinks at his fragments with tired exasperation.

 _You thought of us as_ your _fragments,_ Iota points out excitedly.

There was an unfortunate lack of privacy to be had when you had seven people living in your head.

 _People!_ Iota gushes joyously. _You think of us as_ people!

Some people are pretty easily pleased.

Belatedly, he feels everyone else in his head thrum with delight at what he’d thought, Omega’s near-boiling-point bubbling going back to a tolerable simmer. Great, this was totally a conversation he wanted to be flustered for. 

“You called yourself ‘the body’” Wash says, his disquieted voice intensifying. Some people are less easily pleased.

“No, I--” he flounders. “Can Delta speak? I’m letting Delta speak. Guys?”

_I’m offended I wasn’t elected, but I can see your reasoning._

_You never let me speak!_

_Oh, not never never, just not most of the time. Also, I’m fine, thanks for asking!_

_Oh god no, the last time I spoke in front of him Wash yelled at me!_

_I think he feels bad about that. But no thank you, I’m fine with being inside right now. Too many people…_

_Two is not a lot. And I agree with your choice._

_Was that a snide insult on my person, Gamma?_

_For the last time, just because I’m the deceit fragment doesn’t mean I only speak in lies. That's just not sustainable._

“Delta?” Tucker prods, not willing to jump back into that particular argument at the moment. It just made Gamma sulk.

 _Yes, I’m coming,_ he says.

Tucker lets himself sink into his mind, like submerging himself into the warm water of a bath, like stepping away from the steering wheel, a step removed from the window of his eyes. He feels Delta’s cool fresh normally accommodating presence dominate the mindscape, his face smooth out from its troubled expression without him putting in an iota of effort. Delta’s a pretty calm dude.

“Tucker does not think of himself as ‘the body’,” Delta explains. “He thinks of his body--arguably our body, since he’s agreed to share it--as the body. His mind and body are separate things, from his perspective.”

Wash’s face darkens, and Tucker knows that Delta’s said something wrong. It’s usually Tucker that puts his foot in his mouth, that was what he was trying to avoid by switching out with someone a little more calm and well spoken in the first place. Apparently Wash is in the mood to get pissed off today though, and he _will_ find something to get pissed off by.

“He’s _agreed_ to share it,” Wash repeats angrily. “As if he’d have you all in his head if his ports hadn’t melted, conveniently trapping you all in there.”

“We aren’t trying to become the Meta again,” Delta says, and he’s at the helm now, so his growing panic at so quickly losing control of the conversation is impossible to not notice. It makes Tucker want to take control of the mouth and tell Wash to stop, but if he does that it’ll start a precedent of doing stuff without clearing it with the others, or of making himself seem like more important than the others. They all have an equal share to the body even though it had originally just been his, because they’re all people. No one’s lesser. They'd agreed. 

“Cool it, Wash,” Carolina says, settling a hand on Wash’s shoulder.

 _She’s on our side!_ Iota cheers. _Carolina’s the_ best.

 _She is,_ Eta agrees, so close to Iota that they almost feel like they’re blending, their preferred positions when one of the other fragments doesn't have Eta so scared he can't help but try to get as far away from them as possible.

 _Right, he’s clearly not in the mood to hear anyone but me talking through our mouth today,_ Tucker says.

 _When is he ever?_ Omega says bitingly. Tucker ignores him, and Sigma makes sure that doesn’t piss Omega off too much either. Iota is practically vibrating with the effort of stopping himself from cheering Omega up, since they all know from experience that he just pisses Omega off worse.

 _I agree,_ Delta projects, and he relinquishes his grasp on the body with a sort of sigh of relief, radiating out from his essence in waves that wash over everyone in the mindscape.

“Okay, I’m back,” he says. “Dude, you’ve gotta stop getting so hostile every time someone else is at the helm. Eta’s so scared of you he doesn’t even want to pilot if you’re in the room.”

 _To be fair, Eta’s scared of everything. It’s kind of his thing,_ Sigma says.

“Pilot!” Wash says, after a quick guilty glance at Carolina at the mention of Eta. “So you’re a vehicle now?”

“Stop twisting my words! They’re called _figures of speech,_ Wash!”

 _Why do you get to shout but not me!?_ Omega shouts. Everyone in the mindscape groans, including the body.

“Are you okay?” Wash asks, switching back to concerned as easily as Tucker does personalities, ha ha ha ha. Hilarious. This whole situation's _hilarious._

“We’re _fine,”_ he grounds out, and great, they’re back at square one of the conversation! He’s making so much progress. He wonders how much of the discussion he’ll be able to recreate before Wash realizes what’s going on. Gamma perks up with interest at the idea, and Tucker mentally bats at him. _This is a serious conversation, not a social experiment._

_I don’t see how the two have to be mutually exclusive._

_Gamma, no._

“We have to stop having this argument,” he says. “And by we, I mean me, you and Carolina, and _the seven people in my head_ who are not going away not matter how much you don’t like it or how inconvenient it is for me. Doctor Grey said she can’t risk fixing the ports, it’s a miracle the overheating alone didn’t kill us in the first place. Us, as in me and _the seven people who live in my head!_ Which _I’ve_ come to accept by now. It’s been weeks! I’m sick of these fights!”

Carolina and Wash spend a moment uncomfortably looking at him, then at each other.

“... I’m sorry, Tucker,” Carolina breaks the silence. “We’re… we’re just worried. We don’t mean to be overbearing. We’ve already let one of our friends turn into the Meta under our noses. We don’t want to lose you too.”

“Well,” Tucker says after a little stunned moment (and enduring Iota’s gushing of _how great_ Carolina was, right guys??), “Church--Epsilon Church--he knew about the aftermath of the Meta, how that whole hive mind shtick went for the fragments. _These_ guys know that it’s a bad idea. We’ve got a system. I’m keeping an eye on it.” Wash seems to be having trouble meeting his eyes. He softens his tone without even thinking about it. “It’s okay.”

“... Are you happy?” Wash asks. “Does it hurt? Does it make things difficult?”

“Uh,” Tucker says.

 _This conversation is WAY too fucking heavy for me,_ he thinks. He just gets a general feeling of agreement from all of the fragments instead of any kind of thought out response to help distract him.

 _Answer, you’re worrying him!_ Theta urges him. Right!

“I am happy,” he says, because that’s the right answer. Wait, he should probably put some effort into this, shouldn’t he. Even if he is tired. “I mean. I’m getting used to it. They’re getting used to it too. We’re adjusting, and learning how to compromise and shit. It doesn’t hurt, so long as it doesn’t get too loud, and then not much, and not for long. It… makes things way complicated, yeah. But you guys are gonna help out with that, right? You’ll get used to me zoning out mid conversation and shit, and occasionally being a different person that looks the same, right?”

“Yeah,” Wash rasps after a moment. Aw shit, please don’t cry.

“That’s going to be so confusing for Caboose,” Carolina says with a wry smile, trying to lighten the mood.

“Maybe ‘the body’ can wear name tags,” Wash huffs, still dangerously close to weeping territory, but retreating.

 _I like that idea,_ Delta says. _It’s logical._

“Delta likes that idea,” he announces.

“They should probably be color coded, since he can’t read that well on his bad days,” Wash says, and thank Christ, he’s passed the ‘this is bad and everyone has to realize that’ phase and has entered the ‘let's problem solve this bitch’ phase, lovingly coined by yours truly.

_I want mine to be purple!_

“Theta wants his to be purple.”

_Ooh, dibs on blue!_

_No, I WANT PURPLE_

_Omega, I thought we’d agreed that there was a ‘no shouting’ rule._

“And now they’re arguing about who gets what color.”

“So, not that different from the rest of the Reds and Blues, then,” Wash says. He’s smiling too, now. Tucker smiles back.

 _The_ rest _of the Reds and Blues,_ Iota sighs elatedly.

“Sounds thrilling,” Carolina says.

“It’s alright,” Tucker says, and his fragments echo the sentiment without words in the mindscape. It feels nice.


End file.
